Elder Scrolls Online: Skyrim With Multiplayer?

Just got done slaying that dragon and stealing it's soul? Wish you could have played with friends while you traverse the lands of Tamriel, while playing all The Elder Scrolls games?

But...then you see that it'll cost you $60 up front and then $15 per month. So, is it worth it you ask.

The answer is...

NO! Unless it was $60 up front and then Free-2-Play, with the option to subscribe....and none of that bullshit tiered access to the game itself, not the level design aspect, that Star Wars: The Old Republic has going on; pay for more Action Bar?!


Opinions 

The Game

The Graphics, man, the Graphics

I won't normally talk about how a game looks. Unless it's got some glaring issues that I personally find disturbing in terms of "taking a step backwards" from where games were headed.

Under the beautifully detailed World there is a glaring issue. The armor is 'tattooed on'. And by that I don't mean the typical "my armor moves as I breath" kind of 'tattooed on'. I mean the kind of 'tattooed on' that has zero depth to the actual armor; it is skin-flat. There's no 3D to it.

Now some will say it's to keep performance while in Cyrodiil's massive PVP battles. To that I say. Guild Wars 2 also has massive PVP battles, but it still uses 3D meshes on the armor.

They use the same Mesh Generation methods that World of Warcraft uses; 'tattooed on'. It's rather jarring because the rest of the game looks amazing, especially the characters' faces. Yes, even that 'flat armor' still is detailed.

Story

I was rather pleased with the story. And with the added Voice Over for each and every quest; even the alternate Dialog Trees were Voiced! I will say, however, that some of the 'key fights' in the story felt underwhelming....a Daedric Prince is trying to stop you, here, fight seven monsters. I know that the story is meant to be soloed, but still, you guys could have thrown more NPCs in there duking it out. While I proceed to the 'leader' of the particular fight. Maybe even had it where I could get help by optionally helping the "grunts" kill off the Daedric monsters.

Load Screens/Load Times

What the hell are you doing? Drawing the game a pixel at a time?!

The load times are atrocious. I know not what it is doing while the ESO "logo" spins in the corner. But it sure doesn't do it very fast. This can be rather annoying because there is (at the time of this post) still situations where players will get 'stuck' on the Load Screen; the logo still spins, but nothing happens...even after several minutes (in my case 15+ minutes).

Fortunately, the Load Screens only occur when teleporting. The game uses seamless transitioning for moving between zones, like World of Warcraft uses.

Cyrodiil (the Thunderdome of ESO)

If you don't give a rat's ass about PVP, well, this might still be 'a thing' for you. While most games are content to have a small handful of players beat each other up. ESO goes big...really big. As in "2000 players on a big ol' PVP map" -big.

Whether, you want to help storm the castle..er..keep, capture resources, or run supplies to the front line. Everyone can do something to Help the Cause.

But why help you say? Simple, everyone gets buffs that translate into even PVE. Buffs such as extra health, extra damage, and extra protection (armor and spell resistance). 

FOT

You don't always find what you want...

Horses Have Amazing Stamina

This was cited as a possible bug. In the game you can hold down the 'Sprint' key (default is SHIFT key) and gain a moderate speed increase to your Run Speed. However, it drains Stamina and once that is depleted you return to the normal Run Speed. Mounts also have a Stamina Bar and can 'sprint'. But, they do not stop sprinting when their bar is depleted.

Locked Chests and You

In the world you'll come across Locked Chests. That, if you successfully lockpick, will yield some Experience (~5% of your 'needed XP to level'), Coin (~15 - 50 gold), and items (uncommon or better). Once looted these chests "despawn". I quote that because the chests don't actually disappear from the game world, just what is flagged as 'visible' to your character.

It's relatively easy to force the client to show these 'invisible' items again...but this isn't a forum for cheating. It's probably out on the Internet Tubes; go look it up yourself.

So, being able to 'farm' these Locked Chests for XP, Coin, and Items seems to be pretty broken to me...as some of these items are quite valuable (ie Motifs).

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Takeaway

The game is fun, well detailed; if 'flat' in particular areas. But I, like others, simply cannot justify paying $15 per month. As Angry Joe said, "the game is painfully average".